Global IT Outage Spurs Cancellations of Thousands of Flights

Airlines worldwide reported disruptions on Friday.

Ryan Ewing

Friday, July 19, 2024 at 10:47 AM ET

Verified

Edited By: tccjeremy

Aircraft on the move at New York’s LaGuardia Airport [Credit: AirlineGeeks | William Derrickson]

Key Takeaways:

A global IT issue, caused by a defective software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike impacting Microsoft Windows systems, has led to widespread airline disruptions on Friday.
Nearly 2,700 flights worldwide, including over 1,000 in the U.S., have been canceled, affecting major carriers globally and prompting FAA involvement.
CrowdStrike has identified, isolated, and deployed a fix for the issue, which is not a security incident, but the full resolution and impact on various institutions are still developing.

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An ongoing IT issue is plaguing airline operations across the globe on Friday. As of 8 a.m. EDT, there were nearly 2,700 canceled flights globally, according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium.

In the U.S., carriers have canceled 1,017 flights, or 4.2 percent of their planned schedule, so far. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines say they have resumed some flights while Southwest Airlines has remained largely unaffected by the outage.